1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a machine for selecting and organizing staves for making barrels.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98
Barrels made in the field of cooperage are manufactured from pieces of wood known as staves which are assembled, then bent contiguously to form the side wall of the barrels. Metal hoops hold the staves in position.
The staves are manufactured by machining pieces of oak so as to make use of the flexibility and watertight characteristics of the wood split along the grain.
The oak used to manufacture barrels is used because of the specific properties of this wood which alter the organoleptic characteristics of the wines and liqueurs contained in the casks.
The barrels are manufactured as follows:                the manufacturer selects oak from various sources,        the wood arrives at the splitting shops in the form of raw logs and is converted into bolts,        the bolts are split into billets and the billets are sawn into slats,        the slats are stored in the open air and seasoned for 12 to 36 months minimum, according to the thickness,        after this seasoning operation the slats are made into staves which staves are then assembled to form barrels.        
All of this procedure of preparing the wood and the stave makes the elemental item that makes up the barrel expensive. This expense is further heightened by the cost of oak itself.
The manufacturing methods currently in use in cooperages allow the use only of staves which are symmetric about a horizontal axis and about the vertical axis for making the barrels, these restrictions leading to appreciable waste in terms of materials and therefore appreciable additional costs which are passed on to the price of the casks.
It is an objective of the invention to resolve these main difficulties by proposing a machine able to select and organize the staves, without manual intervention, so as to form a collection of parts ready to be assembled to make a barrel.